Azure Automanage for virtual machines best practices
Caution
On 31 August 2024, both Automation Update Management and the Log Analytics agent it uses will be retired. Migrate to Azure Update Manager before that. Refer to guidance on migrating to Azure Update Manager here. Migrate Now.
These Azure services are automatically onboarded for you when you use Automanage. They are essential to our best practices white paper, which you can find in our Cloud Adoption Framework.
For all of these services, we will auto-onboard, auto-configure, monitor for drift, and mediate if drift is detected. To learn more about this process, see Azure Automanage for virtual machines.
Participating services
| Service | Description | Profiles Supported1 | Preferences supported1 |
|---|---|---|---|
| VM Insights Monitoring | Azure Monitor for VMs monitors the performance and health of your virtual machines, including their running processes and dependencies on other resources. Learn more. | Azure VM Best Practices – Production | No |
| Backup | Azure Backup provides independent and isolated backups to guard against unintended destruction of the data on your VMs. Learn more. Charges are based on the number and size of VMs being protected. Learn more. | Azure VM Best Practices – Production | Yes |
| Microsoft Defender for Cloud | Microsoft Defender for Cloud is a unified infrastructure security management system that strengthens the security posture of your data centers, and provides advanced threat protection across your hybrid workloads in the cloud. Learn more. Automanage will configure the subscription where your VM resides to the free-tier offering of Microsoft Defender for Cloud. If your subscription is already onboarded to Microsoft Defender for Cloud, then automanaged will not reconfigure it. | Azure VM Best Practices – Production, Azure VM Best Practices – Dev/Test | No |
| Microsoft Antimalware | Microsoft Antimalware for Azure is a free real-time protection that helps identify and remove viruses, spyware, and other malicious software. It generates alerts when known malicious or unwanted software tries to install itself or run on your Azure systems. Learn more. | Azure VM Best Practices – Production, Azure VM Best Practices – Dev/Test | Yes |
| Update Management | You can use Update Management in Azure Automation to manage operating system updates for your virtual machines. You can quickly assess the status of available updates on all agent machines and manage the process of installing required updates for servers. Learn more. | Azure VM Best Practices – Production, Azure VM Best Practices – Dev/Test | No |
| Change Tracking & Inventory | Change Tracking and Inventory combines change tracking and inventory functions to allow you to track virtual machine and server infrastructure changes. The service supports change tracking across services, daemons software, registry, and files in your environment to help you diagnose unwanted changes and raise alerts. Inventory support allows you to query in-guest resources for visibility into installed applications and other configuration items. Learn more. | Azure VM Best Practices – Production, Azure VM Best Practices – Dev/Test | No |
| Guest configuration | Guest configuration is used to monitor the configuration and report on the compliance of the machine. The Automanage service will install the Windows security baselines using the guest configuration extension. Learn more. | Azure VM Best Practices – Production, Azure VM Best Practices – Dev/Test | No |
| Azure Automation Account | Azure Automation supports management throughout the lifecycle of your infrastructure and applications. Learn more. | Azure VM Best Practices – Production, Azure VM Best Practices – Dev/Test | No |
| Log Analytics Workspace | Azure Monitor stores log data in a Log Analytics workspace, which is an Azure resource and a container where data is collected, aggregated, and serves as an administrative boundary. Learn more. | Azure VM Best Practices – Production, Azure VM Best Practices – Dev/Test | No |
1 Configuration profiles are available when you are enabling Automanage. Learn more. You can also adjust the default settings of the configuration profile and set your own preferences within the best practices constraints.
Next steps
Try enabling Automanage for virtual machines in the Azure portal.